Overview


io9.com, part of the Gawker Media Group, functions largely as an interactive scientific publication. Articles read much in the same fashion that you would expect from magazines like Wired and Popular Science. Topics also include Science Fiction reviews and coverage of film/books/tv, technological awsomeness and apparent scientific breakthroughs. As a blogging community, members can (via login) make commentary on posts themselves and/or on the comments of other users. This allows for feedback to the publication and a certain amount of discussion to be allowed to persist within the article's comment thread.

The layout and user interface characteristics of io9 is also a recent development after ther redesign which recieved mixed reviews. It features dual scrolling options where the most recently written stories are posted on the left side and you can scroll down through stories posted that day. On the right is a headline index of all posts that are arraigned as top stories in topic (lasers, science, TV, astronomy etc.). You can also arrange the headline index by most popular. Clicking any headline, both in the headline index or on the blog view display will cause the blog view display to change to the story of choice. The headline index remains unchanged in case you had scrolled down to a particular section and wanted to remain there. It is a design I find very usable.




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Future Trends?